*By Alisha Haridasani*
Apple plans to introduce software that will reportedly help habitual iPhone users spend less time glued to their smartphones, a shift away from the company’s efforts to keep people more reliant on its hardware.
The company is expected to unveil its Digital Health initiative at the annual Worldwide Developers Conference next week in San Jose, [Bloomberg reported](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-31/apple-to-tout-digital-health-ar-features-at-software-conference). The tools, bundled with the new iOS mobile operating system, help monitor how much time people spend on their phones.
The Digital Health tools are likely a response to concerns raised by two of the company's shareholders in January about the possibly addictive nature of some smartphone apps, particularly among children. “We believe there is a clear need for Apple to offer parents more choices and tools to help them ensure that young consumers are using their products in an optimal manner,” the shareholders said in an [open letter](https://thinkdifferentlyaboutkids.com/).
Apple’s decision to encourage people to put down the company’s most popular product may seem counterintuitive, but it may also point towards a future business strategy for Apple that is more reliant on its services business, which includes Apple Music and iCloud.
The iPhone accounted for more than 60 percent of Apple's revenue in [Q2](https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/Q2_FY18_Data_Summary.pdf), but growth in sales have slowed in the past few years. Apple’s services, however, are starting to generate more revenue, surpassing revenue from iPads, Macs, and other accessories, such as Apple Watch and Apple TV.
Apple has tried to boost subscriptions for its Music service and has invested in producing original content, as competition with Spotify and Netflix heats up.
SpaceX is resolving toilet spills in its capsules before it launches another crew for NASA. Liftoff is currently set for early Sunday from Florida's Kennedy Space Center.
Last spring, as false claims about vaccine safety threatened to undermine the world's response to COVID-19, researchers at Facebook found they could reduce vaccine misinformation by tweaking how vaccine posts show up on users' newsfeeds.
A report in the New York Times published Sunday called 'Inside Amazon's Worst Human Resources Problem' details the company mishandling paid and unpaid leave for some of its workers for more than a year and a half, following an email sent to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos from a new mother who works at a warehouse in Oklahoma, which then led to an internal investigation at Amazon. Seattle tech correspondent for the New York Times Karen Weise joined Cheddar News' Closing Bell to talk about her report and what the Amazon investigation found.
Facebook the company is losing control of Facebook the product — and of the carefully crafted image it’s spent over a decade selling despite problems like misinformation, human trafficking, and pervasive extremist groups on its platform.
Microsoft says the same Russia-backed hackers responsible for the 2020 SolarWinds breach continue to attack the global supply chain and have been targeting cloud service resellers and others.
Record electric vehicle sales last summer amid a shortage of computer chips and other materials propelled Tesla Inc. to the biggest quarterly net earnings in its history.
For nearly a decade, bitcoin evangelists have sought SEC approval for a bitcoin-linked exchange-traded fund (ETF) in order to attract more investors into the crypto space.
Netflix has posted sharply higher third-quarter earnings thanks to a stronger slate of titles. Those include “Squid Game,” the dystopian show from South Korea that the company says became its biggest-ever TV show.
China says its launch of a new spacecraft was merely a test to see whether the vehicle could be re-used.
Facebook says it plans to hire 10,000 workers in the European Union over the next five years to work on a new computing platform.
Load More